30 Days of Night: Light of Day

BANGING NOISES FROM THE BACK HAD TO COME FROM MARINA, OR SO BARRY DESPERATELY WANTED TO BELIEVE.

Then she called him. Then she started shooting. Barry freaked, his hand almost reflexively yanking the trigger before he stopped it. Her bullets glowed with an intense white heat, burning into his retinas. The goggles only made it worse. When he heard something else, something closer, he swung around to try to see it but ghost images from her bright rounds in his eyes half-blinded him. And it was dark against dark, just a rustle of motion passing from one shelving unit to another. Could have been a big rat.

Or something else.

He blinked, afraid to leave his eyes closed longer than a fraction of a second. While they were closed he heard something else, louder and closer. Marina’s voice sounded very far away. He opened his eyes again. The ghost images had faded a little, allowing him to see better through the goggles.

He wished he couldn’t, wished he was blind.

Instead, he saw a horrible thing charging him. Its forehead was swept back, tiny eyes bright, nose jutting forward. Below that a gaping mouth held jagged teeth, way more teeth than anything needed.

Enter the terrifying world of

30 DAYS OF NIGHT

Novels available from Pocket Books:

30 Days of Night: Rumors of the Undead

30 Days of Night: Immortal Remains

30 Days of Night: Eternal Damnation

30 Days of Night: Light of Day

Graphic Novels/Comic Books available from IDW Publishing:

30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night: Dark Days

30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow

30 Days of Night: Bloodsucker Tales

30 Days of Night: Dead Space

30 Days of Night: Spreading the Disease

30 Days of Night: Eben and Stella

30 Days of Night: Beyond Barrow

30 Days of Night: 30 Days ’Til Death

30 Days of Night Annual 2004
(featuring “The Book Club,” “The Hand That Feeds,”
“Agent Norris: MIA,” “The Trapper”)

30 Days of Night Annual 2005

30 Days of Night: “Picking Up the Pieces”
(featured in IDW’s Tales of Terror)

LIGHT OF DAY

JEFF MARIOTTE

Based on the
IDW Publishing graphic novel series

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith and Idea + Design Works, LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Pocket Star Books paperback edition October 2009

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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.

Cover design by Alan Dingman, art by Justin Randall

Manufactured in the United States of America

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

ISBN 978-1-4391-2227-3
ISBN 978-1-4391-6476-1 (ebook)

This one’s dedicated to Ed.
Because really, it’s overdue, isn’t it?

Great thanks go out to Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith, and the gang at IDW Publishing; to all the fine folks at Simon & Schuster; to Dianne S. for the webwork; and to Howard and Katie, who take care of me.

L
ORD, HE WAS HUNGRY.

He groaned and his eyes flickered open, shifting from the darkness of unconsciousness to the literal but less complete darkness of his surroundings. It took him a few moments to remember where he was. As the gauzy cobwebs fell away from his mind, he recalled that he had been attacked in the common area of his housing unit. The scientists at this research facility lived in apartments, eight units per building, each with a lobby area, common recreation facilities, and a secure room in the basement. When the warning klaxons had sounded—almost simultaneously with the first explosions from the attacking force—he had stumbled out of bed and headed for the hallway, bound for the secure room. But he had dithered, taking time to pull on a robe over his cotton pajamas, wondering whether he should try to grab a laptop or any other personal objects, and by the time he made it to the recreation room, another blast blew in a window and part of the wall, showering him in glass and debris.

He fell behind a couch, hoping its bulk would protect him from further attack.

It was an ugly beast, that couch. School bus yellow, with red, orange, and green stripes on a diagonal, staggered about three and a half feet apart, with a solid wooden frame and what seemed like eighteen inches of foam padding. He and the other scientists laughed about it sometimes, because the couch hadn’t just shown up here. Every building had one just like it. Some government procurement officer, probably sitting back in DC, had decided that this particular couch would work well for this particular facility. They wondered what kind of kickback the manufacturer of hideous couches could offer a procurement officer, figured he probably had a houseful of equally ugly chairs by now.

But it was a heavy son of a bitch, that was the thing. All that wood, all that padding. He could barely move it. So when he realized he would never make it to the secure room, he went behind the couch instead. The thing should’ve have been heavy enough to shield against a nuclear blast. It could keep him safe.

Except it hadn’t.

He dragged himself from behind it now, his guts churning. He was cut and bruised, but he didn’t think anything was broken. And he was so hungry. There was food in his apartment, and he needed to get something in his stomach. He took a couple of steps when a sharp pain in his left thigh almost dumped him back on the floor. With effort, he made it back to his door and pushed inside. The whole building reeked of smoke and
burned electrical wires. He would have to find out if there were any other survivors. Later, though. First he had to eat.

His kitchen appeared intact. He opened the refrigerator. A couple slices of leftover pizza sat on the top shelf, enclosed in a zippered plastic bag. His stomach flipped as he tore into the bag, then shoved the end of one wedge into his mouth and bit down.

As soon as the familiar taste hit, he choked and spat into the open refrigerator. Bile filled his throat. He spat again. Had the pizza gone sour? He had eaten the rest just that night.

There was some chicken in a plastic container, roasted with garlic and rosemary. It didn’t sound any better than the pizza, but that furious hunger wouldn’t let him go. He popped open the lid and snatched up a leg with his hands, bringing it toward his face.

He couldn’t bring himself to bite into it. It smelled rancid, foul.

There
was
a smell present that made his mouth water, that kept the hunger stalking inside him like a wild beast, but it didn’t come from the refrigerator.

He let the door swing shut and stood in the kitchen for a minute, trying to isolate the aroma. When he realized what it was, his stomach lurched again. He understood, finally, what had happened.

Rushing into the bathroom, he flipped open the toilet lid and tried to vomit. Nothing came out but a few drops of bile. He spat, ran some water in the sink,
ducked his hands under the stream, and doused his face and hair.

Wet faced, light filtering in from the hall illuminating him, he looked at himself in the mirror. He thought he knew what to expect. Larry Greenbarger. Thirty-nine, he looked forty-five easy. He carried forty pounds more than he should have, on a small frame, with skinny legs and puny arms and sloping shoulders that bowed toward the center of his chest. His brown hair was curly, receding prematurely from a high, freckled forehead. His eyes were blue and clear, and he had never needed glasses. Not many of the scientists he knew could make that claim.

At the moment, he wouldn’t have minded a little blurriness in his vision.

He was still Larry Greenbarger. There was a familiarity in his eyes, in the curl and cut of his hair.

But beyond that, all was new.

His face had gone gaunt, his chin distended, his forehead elongated. Ears that had once been small and tucked close to his head flapped out like bat wings. Skin that had been tanned by months spent in the Nevada desert—never mind that he worked indoors, just walking from the residence to the lab or over to the commissary or snack bar was enough to bake a man—had gone pale, almost as porcelain white as the sink he leaned on.

The worst was his mouth; once small and pursed, it gapped like a briefcase opened wide, filled with what seemed like hundreds of needle-sharp teeth.

The lacerations and bruises covering his body came not just from the glass and bits of wall that had struck him but also from the brief, fruitless struggle he had forgotten about until now.

He swung away from the mirror, unable to face himself any longer. He knew what he had become. He had studied enough of them to recognize it.

And he knew with utter certainty what it was he hungered for. He wouldn’t find sustenance in his refrigerator, or anywhere in his apartment. Out there, though, in the hallways and common areas, maybe even in the so-called secure room that he suspected had proved more trap than salvation? Oh, yes, he would find it there, and plenty of it.

As he stalked from the apartment, he tried to remember his attacker. It had been dark, except for the uneven light cast by flickering flames, but it seemed that it had been a female, young—at least in appearance, if not years on this earth—slight. Black hair, cropped short, black clothing. Tights, he recalled, striped tights on her legs, pink and white, incongruous with the rest of her look. Little girl tights, he had thought.

He had been hiding behind that heinous couch, blubbering softly, even as he told himself that only steely silence could protect him. And he had wet himself, to his mortification. But he believed himself safe from harm just the same, as if the couch could cast some sort of force field around him. Then he felt an
iron grip on his right ankle, just above his sock (Larry had always worn socks to bed, since childhood, although he had tried unsuccessfully to break the habit in college), and something yanked him from hiding as easily as he might have pulled a child’s doll from the same location.